You're right. There IS more to this. What has happened over the last two years? People have spent more time downloading videos off hulu.com or youtube.com or other video-sharing sites,
As a result overall traffic has gone up, while peer-to-peer has remained relatively steady. Therefore P2P has dropped relative to all the other traffic on the web, even though people are still downloading the same amount as always.
>>>Don't upgrade if you don't think it's worth it!
You can't do that with Macs. They'll stop running the latest software. For example I wouldn't be able to run Firefox 3 or 3.5 on my G4 Mac's original OS (10.1). I had to upgrade. .
>>>I suspect it's due to an IT department with a platform bias.
Could be but this "bias" seems to afflict all 3 of my alma maters - my high school, my local college, and my PSU grad school. I'm inclined to think cost is the main issue at work here.
I think the whole "search for killer asteroids" is fatally flawed. Let's see... the last one hit 200,000,000 years ago. The last time someone won my State lottery was just last week, and typically they hand-out ten of these multi-million dollars prizes a year, so 10 out of 4 million tickets sold.
I have about 500 times better odds of winning my State lottery, than getting killed by an asteroid. I'm not expecting the former to happen during my lifetime, and doubt the latter will either.
If humans do go extinct, it's probably be through suicide rather than a giant rock.
>>>the response time for 10.5 leopard was the same on all the machines from the mac pro towers in the media labs to the 1998 imac net nodes tucked away in obscure corners >>>
I don't believe this story. I don't think you intentionally misled us, but you probably didn't realize you can Not run 10.5 on 1998 iMacs. They don't meet the 866 megahertz minimum requirement. Perhaps they were running 10.4 just like my PowerMac runs, the latest version available for its speed.
>>>Win7 may be if you're upgrading from Windows XP
I don't think so. I have XP. It costs about $200 to do the upgrade, but why bother? For just a little more I could walk into Walmart during a sales event, and get a whole new PC with the Win7 OS included "free". Yes that PC would be bottom-line, but it's still better hardware than the single-core P4 I have now.
Linux has too many limitations. For example I use a dialup ISP called "netscape", also a program called "web accelerator" when traveling. But when I tried to run it on my Linux laptop it crashed and burned. (And no Wine did not run it either.) I did find a way to dial directly to the ISP, but without the accelerator it was slow as snails.
I didn't experiment further (the laptop is still new to me), but suspect Linux won't run lots of things, like PC-based games which expect to see Windows not linux, or Microsoft Office, or Xilinx FPGA Designer software, or Itunes, and on and on.
>>>the implications of choosing an application-centric or a document-centric GUI design.
The implication is that when I'm using my Mac and I close a window, I think the RAM has been freed, but in reality the application is still running in the background. That's kinda annoying.
The words don't really matter. You can call them service packs or upgrades or updates or revisions or whatever. None of that matters. What matters is how many times you have to open your wallet to get *paid* releases:
XP-to-Vista-to-Win7 (average) - 4 years 10.1-to-...-to-10.6 (average) - 1.6 years
As you can see the Mac OS will be more costly for you as a user, with more frequent support costs. It's why even though I've been using Macs since the Quadra days (as a replacement for my 68040 Commodore=Amiga), I've decided it's time to move-on. I liked that they used alternative Motorola and PPC architectures, but now that distinction has disappeared. Such alternates only exist in the game consoles.
I suspect this is also why I've seen Macs disappear from Penn State's computer labs. You can still find some, but it used to be a 50-50 PC-to-Mac mix and now the Macs are rare.
I could run 10.5 on my PowerMac but I'd have to use the hacking program LeopardAssist to overcome the 866 MHz minimum requirement. I'm not confident that would work, so I just stopped at 10.4. Now you see, this is another example of how Apple fails to support old machines.
Why did Apple have to impose a 866 MHz requirement on their G4 and G5 machines? Why not just let the user override the install, and take the risk of using a slow 400, 600, or 800 MHz machine.
Yes true but after about 4 years you'll no longer be able to upgrade (as is the case with my PowerMac), and you'll have to go-out and spend another $70,000 car to get the latest features.
>>Or $10 if you bought a mac after June 15th of this year.:)
Well it actually costs nothing if you buy it from an ebay seller, and then claim "non-receipt" to force a refund via your credit card. (ducking and running);-)
Another expense with Apples is the inability to run new OSes on old hardware.
My Windows machine machine is almost 9 years old, but could run Win 7 with a simple RAM upgrade (from 1/2 gig to 1 gig). Try running 10.6 Snow Leopard on nine-year-old hardware. Or even 5-year-old hardware. The OS requirements are designed to force obsolescence so you HAVE to go-out and get new Apple hardware. You can't even "override" to force an install; you just get blocked. This is why I have a perfectly-good G4 PowerMac, but it stopped being supported only 4 years after I got it (with 10.4), while my ancient PC still gots "juice".
Yeah I know you're going to label me "troll" but it's really just my opinion based-upon owning both systems. The PC was the cheaper route.
Not really. It wasn't a fair fight. QUOTE: "Windows 7 Ultimate.....with 1GB of RAM and Snow Leopard.....with 2GB of RAM." I have no great love for either MS or MAC, but we all know Windows on just 1 gig is going to lots of hard-drive caching and slower performance. He should have either upgraded the Win-PC to 2 gig, or downgraded the Mac to 1 gig, in order to make the test as identical as possible.
Why should I pay for a program that claims I'm ineligible to receive benefits? That's like paying Microsoft for Windows 7, but they never bother to send it to me. (Or worse - they give me Vista instead.) The purpose of these "safety net" programs is to be there when people need them, but it's not there, then that's fraud. Like what Bernie Madoff did.
Re:Most people simply don't think about security
on
The Myths of Security
·
· Score: -1
>>>simply don't think about security.
Perhaps because we know "locking" our computer is as pointless as locking the car or locking the house. The thieves can just ignore the lock and come-in through the window. Most our safety relies upon the fact that 99.9% of our neighbors are moral and don't want to break-in.
It also helps if you don't use known-hacked programs like Internet Explorer. Go use Firefox or Safari or Chrome.
>>>$19K is a lot more income taxes than many if not most USians pay. How about if they just refund it to him?
A year on unemployment would be equivalent to refunding the Taxes I paid on April 15. Of course what I received so far (about $7000) is far short of the amount I paid. I would have been better off to tell the IRS, "Sorry I lost my job," and keep the $19,000 rather than mail-in that check.
What I don't understand is why they make us pay income tax on unemployment checks. Or social security checks. It would make more sense to make that money tax exempt, rather than hand the money to the citizen, and then demand 20% of it back???
You're being facetious, but the government-run system really is a mess. I tried to file my biweekly claim for unemployment and it told me it's "inactive". Then I followed the instructions to reactivate it, and I was told I was ineligible because I haven't worked these last six months. Well of course I haven't worked. That's why I was on unemployment!
Stupid, stupid government.
I only got 4 months (April, May, June, July). Another engineering friend got 13 months - why am I being cutoff?:-(
Your numbers are correct (or at least wikipedia claims they are correcT), but your math is wrong because most people who are on Medicare are ALSO on Medicaid, as is the case with my parents. It's a 1-to-1 overlap. There's also probably some overlap between Medicare and the Vets program. So the real numbers would be:
43 + 7 == 50 million == about 17%.
That's how it should be - a safety net for those who need helps, rather than a complete takeover.
>>>Waiting 9 months until you might get a job back in January is a pretty shitty reason for not getting off your ass
Go sit on your finger and swivel on it til you squeal like a pig*, you anonymous coward. I've actually had 3 interviews over those *7* months, and in every case it's the same - they hire someone else. In my most recent interview they refused to hire me because they were looking for a C# programmer and I "only" know C++.
Yes I'm serious. But that's the nature of the market. When you have ~500 unemployed engineers all applying for 1 opening, the bosses can afford to be picky. Just like customers in a retail store are picky not to buy a dented or scratched item. They likely hired the next guy after me who DOES have C# experience.
Of course this is only temporary - come January when new budgets arrive and the money is flowing more freely, I expect I'll find a job. That's just how the business cycle flows, and why I was counting on my unemployment to carry me until then.
Anybody who earns over 50,000 a year CAN afford a ~$3000 a year insurance premium. Don't tell me it's too expensive. You can even deduct the cost off your taxes, reduce them by ~$1000, and apply that "bonus" money to the insurance, so your true additional cost is only 2000 a year.
Or $166 a month. You can afford a $100 TV bill, a $70 cellphone bill, a $60 a month internet bill, but you can't afford insurance??? I don't believe it. Cancel or downgrade one of those other services if money's too tight. *Necessities* before luxuries.
Because - I can guarantee you that once Uncle Sam healthcare passes, your health tax bill *will* be 3 times higher than that $166/month private insurance.
I'm not saying "lithium bad" only that they need more work. Two things just off the top of my head:
- improved internal insulation so they don't fail except in extreme circumstances (sitting in a car at 150 degrees) like other battery technologies. Until they do that, they cannot be used in hybrid cars since the burning battery will set-off the fuel tank (boom).
- eliminate the "old age" phenomenon where even a brand-new lithium-ion battery is dead after 6 years. I've got NiCads that 20 years old and after a refresh work almost as good as new.
- develop landfill-friendly materials. NiMHs can be thrown away. NiCads and Li-Ion batteries can not.
Actually most West European languages have solidified since 1500. The pronunciations have changed such that Shakespeare would have said "toe bay orrr note toe bay," but the words are still the same. This is thanks to the rise of prescriptive education that defines what is acceptable (night) and what is not acceptable (nacht) for standardized English. Prior to that there was no definitive words, so things evolved rapidly from Old English to Middle English to Modern English in just 400 years.
Sure. Why not? When my 6-year-old nephew asked, "How do babies get in mommys bellies?" I just told him straight-up. The daddy puts his "pee pee" into his wife's private area, and that puts his seed into her belly, and then it grows into a baby. He went "ewwww" and then went back to watching TV. If he wants more info, he'll ask when he's ready to handle it.
We discuss other "disgusting" things with our kids, like how to pee into the toilet, or how to wipe the brown stuff off their butt, so I see no reason to withhold the sex information either. In fact I think it's better to them them NOW when they young, rather than wait until they become self-conscious teens who are easily embarrassed.
It's not enough to just set arbitrary rules and tell the kid, "You're punished." You also have to teach WHY they are being punished. When my niece carelessly knocked-over my Gamecube I asked her point-blank, "Did you do that?" "Yes." "Ya know if you break somebody else's property, you have to buy them a new one." "Oh. I'm sorry." So far the thing still works but if it ceases to work, yes I'm going to subtract $25 from her piggyback so I can get a replacement. Just like I had to spend $1500 to fix some guy's car when I rear-ended it in 2001. That's how life works.
Same with cellphones. The kid gets... say $10 each month. If she uses it all up, then it's HER responsibility to buy more time. Not mine. -or- She could learn to budget her dollars better so she doesn't run out.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. There IS more to this. What has happened over the last two years? People have spent more time downloading videos off hulu.com or youtube.com or other video-sharing sites,
As a result overall traffic has gone up, while peer-to-peer has remained relatively steady. Therefore P2P has dropped relative to all the other traffic on the web, even though people are still downloading the same amount as always.
>>>Don't upgrade if you don't think it's worth it!
You can't do that with Macs. They'll stop running the latest software. For example I wouldn't be able to run Firefox 3 or 3.5 on my G4 Mac's original OS (10.1). I had to upgrade.
.
>>>I suspect it's due to an IT department with a platform bias.
Could be but this "bias" seems to afflict all 3 of my alma maters - my high school, my local college, and my PSU grad school. I'm inclined to think cost is the main issue at work here.
I think the whole "search for killer asteroids" is fatally flawed. Let's see... the last one hit 200,000,000 years ago. The last time someone won my State lottery was just last week, and typically they hand-out ten of these multi-million dollars prizes a year, so 10 out of 4 million tickets sold.
I have about 500 times better odds of winning my State lottery, than getting killed by an asteroid. I'm not expecting the former to happen during my lifetime, and doubt the latter will either.
If humans do go extinct, it's probably be through suicide rather than a giant rock.
>>>the response time for 10.5 leopard was the same on all the machines from the mac pro towers in the media labs to the 1998 imac net nodes tucked away in obscure corners
>>>
I don't believe this story. I don't think you intentionally misled us, but you probably didn't realize you can Not run 10.5 on 1998 iMacs. They don't meet the 866 megahertz minimum requirement. Perhaps they were running 10.4 just like my PowerMac runs, the latest version available for its speed.
>>>Win7 may be if you're upgrading from Windows XP
I don't think so. I have XP. It costs about $200 to do the upgrade, but why bother? For just a little more I could walk into Walmart during a sales event, and get a whole new PC with the Win7 OS included "free". Yes that PC would be bottom-line, but it's still better hardware than the single-core P4 I have now.
Linux has too many limitations. For example I use a dialup ISP called "netscape", also a program called "web accelerator" when traveling. But when I tried to run it on my Linux laptop it crashed and burned. (And no Wine did not run it either.) I did find a way to dial directly to the ISP, but without the accelerator it was slow as snails.
I didn't experiment further (the laptop is still new to me), but suspect Linux won't run lots of things, like PC-based games which expect to see Windows not linux, or Microsoft Office, or Xilinx FPGA Designer software, or Itunes, and on and on.
>>>the implications of choosing an application-centric or a document-centric GUI design.
The implication is that when I'm using my Mac and I close a window, I think the RAM has been freed, but in reality the application is still running in the background. That's kinda annoying.
The words don't really matter. You can call them service packs or upgrades or updates or revisions or whatever. None of that matters. What matters is how many times you have to open your wallet to get *paid* releases:
XP-to-Vista-to-Win7 (average) - 4 years
10.1-to-...-to-10.6 (average) - 1.6 years
As you can see the Mac OS will be more costly for you as a user, with more frequent support costs. It's why even though I've been using Macs since the Quadra days (as a replacement for my 68040 Commodore=Amiga), I've decided it's time to move-on. I liked that they used alternative Motorola and PPC architectures, but now that distinction has disappeared. Such alternates only exist in the game consoles.
I suspect this is also why I've seen Macs disappear from Penn State's computer labs. You can still find some, but it used to be a 50-50 PC-to-Mac mix and now the Macs are rare.
I could run 10.5 on my PowerMac but I'd have to use the hacking program LeopardAssist to overcome the 866 MHz minimum requirement. I'm not confident that would work, so I just stopped at 10.4. Now you see, this is another example of how Apple fails to support old machines.
Why did Apple have to impose a 866 MHz requirement on their G4 and G5 machines? Why not just let the user override the install, and take the risk of using a slow 400, 600, or 800 MHz machine.
Yes true but after about 4 years you'll no longer be able to upgrade (as is the case with my PowerMac), and you'll have to go-out and spend another $70,000 car to get the latest features.
>>>>>30 bucks.
>>Or $10 if you bought a mac after June 15th of this year. :)
Well it actually costs nothing if you buy it from an ebay seller, and then claim "non-receipt" to force a refund via your credit card. (ducking and running) ;-)
Another expense with Apples is the inability to run new OSes on old hardware.
My Windows machine machine is almost 9 years old, but could run Win 7 with a simple RAM upgrade (from 1/2 gig to 1 gig). Try running 10.6 Snow Leopard on nine-year-old hardware. Or even 5-year-old hardware. The OS requirements are designed to force obsolescence so you HAVE to go-out and get new Apple hardware. You can't even "override" to force an install; you just get blocked. This is why I have a perfectly-good G4 PowerMac, but it stopped being supported only 4 years after I got it (with 10.4), while my ancient PC still gots "juice".
Yeah I know you're going to label me "troll" but it's really just my opinion based-upon owning both systems. The PC was the cheaper route.
Not really. It wasn't a fair fight. QUOTE: "Windows 7 Ultimate.....with 1GB of RAM and Snow Leopard.....with 2GB of RAM." I have no great love for either MS or MAC, but we all know Windows on just 1 gig is going to lots of hard-drive caching and slower performance. He should have either upgraded the Win-PC to 2 gig, or downgraded the Mac to 1 gig, in order to make the test as identical as possible.
>>>And now you want to refuse to pay into it?
Why should I pay for a program that claims I'm ineligible to receive benefits? That's like paying Microsoft for Windows 7, but they never bother to send it to me. (Or worse - they give me Vista instead.) The purpose of these "safety net" programs is to be there when people need them, but it's not there, then that's fraud. Like what Bernie Madoff did.
>>>simply don't think about security.
Perhaps because we know "locking" our computer is as pointless as locking the car or locking the house. The thieves can just ignore the lock and come-in through the window. Most our safety relies upon the fact that 99.9% of our neighbors are moral and don't want to break-in.
It also helps if you don't use known-hacked programs like Internet Explorer. Go use Firefox or Safari or Chrome.
What's with the Day of the Triffids escapee? That flower looks mean.
>>>$19K is a lot more income taxes than many if not most USians pay. How about if they just refund it to him?
A year on unemployment would be equivalent to refunding the Taxes I paid on April 15. Of course what I received so far (about $7000) is far short of the amount I paid. I would have been better off to tell the IRS, "Sorry I lost my job," and keep the $19,000 rather than mail-in that check.
What I don't understand is why they make us pay income tax on unemployment checks. Or social security checks. It would make more sense to make that money tax exempt, rather than hand the money to the citizen, and then demand 20% of it back???
You're being facetious, but the government-run system really is a mess. I tried to file my biweekly claim for unemployment and it told me it's "inactive". Then I followed the instructions to reactivate it, and I was told I was ineligible because I haven't worked these last six months. Well of course I haven't worked. That's why I was on unemployment!
Stupid, stupid government.
I only got 4 months (April, May, June, July). Another engineering friend got 13 months - why am I being cutoff? :-(
Your numbers are correct (or at least wikipedia claims they are correcT), but your math is wrong because most people who are on Medicare are ALSO on Medicaid, as is the case with my parents. It's a 1-to-1 overlap. There's also probably some overlap between Medicare and the Vets program. So the real numbers would be:
43 + 7 == 50 million == about 17%.
That's how it should be - a safety net for those who need helps, rather than a complete takeover.
>>>Waiting 9 months until you might get a job back in January is a pretty shitty reason for not getting off your ass
Go sit on your finger and swivel on it til you squeal like a pig*, you anonymous coward. I've actually had 3 interviews over those *7* months, and in every case it's the same - they hire someone else. In my most recent interview they refused to hire me because they were looking for a C# programmer and I "only" know C++.
Yes I'm serious. But that's the nature of the market. When you have ~500 unemployed engineers all applying for 1 opening, the bosses can afford to be picky. Just like customers in a retail store are picky not to buy a dented or scratched item. They likely hired the next guy after me who DOES have C# experience.
Of course this is only temporary - come January when new budgets arrive and the money is flowing more freely, I expect I'll find a job. That's just how the business cycle flows, and why I was counting on my unemployment to carry me until then.
*
* Red Dwarf reference.
>>>Which means in turn that it is too expensive.
Anybody who earns over 50,000 a year CAN afford a ~$3000 a year insurance premium. Don't tell me it's too expensive. You can even deduct the cost off your taxes, reduce them by ~$1000, and apply that "bonus" money to the insurance, so your true additional cost is only 2000 a year.
Or $166 a month. You can afford a $100 TV bill, a $70 cellphone bill, a $60 a month internet bill, but you can't afford insurance??? I don't believe it. Cancel or downgrade one of those other services if money's too tight. *Necessities* before luxuries.
Because - I can guarantee you that once Uncle Sam healthcare passes, your health tax bill *will* be 3 times higher than that $166/month private insurance.
I'm not saying "lithium bad" only that they need more work. Two things just off the top of my head:
- improved internal insulation so they don't fail except in extreme circumstances (sitting in a car at 150 degrees) like other battery technologies. Until they do that, they cannot be used in hybrid cars since the burning battery will set-off the fuel tank (boom).
- eliminate the "old age" phenomenon where even a brand-new lithium-ion battery is dead after 6 years. I've got NiCads that 20 years old and after a refresh work almost as good as new.
- develop landfill-friendly materials. NiMHs can be thrown away. NiCads and Li-Ion batteries can not.
Actually most West European languages have solidified since 1500. The pronunciations have changed such that Shakespeare would have said "toe bay orrr note toe bay," but the words are still the same. This is thanks to the rise of prescriptive education that defines what is acceptable (night) and what is not acceptable (nacht) for standardized English. Prior to that there was no definitive words, so things evolved rapidly from Old English to Middle English to Modern English in just 400 years.
>>>think its great to teach 5 year olds Sex ed.
Sure. Why not? When my 6-year-old nephew asked, "How do babies get in mommys bellies?" I just told him straight-up. The daddy puts his "pee pee" into his wife's private area, and that puts his seed into her belly, and then it grows into a baby. He went "ewwww" and then went back to watching TV. If he wants more info, he'll ask when he's ready to handle it.
We discuss other "disgusting" things with our kids, like how to pee into the toilet, or how to wipe the brown stuff off their butt, so I see no reason to withhold the sex information either. In fact I think it's better to them them NOW when they young, rather than wait until they become self-conscious teens who are easily embarrassed.
You hit the nail on the head.
It's not enough to just set arbitrary rules and tell the kid, "You're punished." You also have to teach WHY they are being punished. When my niece carelessly knocked-over my Gamecube I asked her point-blank, "Did you do that?" "Yes." "Ya know if you break somebody else's property, you have to buy them a new one." "Oh. I'm sorry." So far the thing still works but if it ceases to work, yes I'm going to subtract $25 from her piggyback so I can get a replacement. Just like I had to spend $1500 to fix some guy's car when I rear-ended it in 2001. That's how life works.
Same with cellphones. The kid gets... say $10 each month. If she uses it all up, then it's HER responsibility to buy more time. Not mine. -or- She could learn to budget her dollars better so she doesn't run out.